Welcome to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Tara Palmeri.

Another week, another guilty verdict. This time it was Hunter Biden up at bat. Next on the docket is the sentencing for a former president. In between, there are some casual campaign events like the first presidential debate, in two weeks, and then the Republican National Convention. But who can really keep up with it when the focus seems to be on the court houses?

🚨🚨Programming note: For more on the Hunter saga, and separating truth and fiction in the “Biden Crime Family” narrative, check out the latest episode of Somebody’s Gotta With with Biden family chronicler (and my partner on the story that launched the gun investigation), Ben Schreckinger. Earlier in the week, Michael LaRosa, a former communications director in the first lady’s office, came on the show to give his former colleagues some thoughts on how to deal with the press. Subscribe here.

In tonight’s issue, fresh reporting on why Doug Burgum, the aw-shucks centimillionaire governor, could be the next Mike Pence. But first…

• Trump prison scenario planning: Shortly after he was declared guilty in his New York hush money trial, Donald Trump mused on Fox & Friends, somewhat incredulously, that he was okay with the prospect of serving prison time. (Sure…) More recently, however, I’m told that the reality appears to be sinking in more forcefully, and the former (and perhaps future) president has been peppering friends and aides with more specific questions. In particular, I’ve been told, he’s been asking: What type of jail do you think they’ll send me to?

  Elie Honig, a former prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, told me if Trump goes to jail—and he does not believe that he will—he’ll most likely serve time in upstate New York, possibly at the Putnam County Correctional Facility in Carmel. “I had a couple of highly sensitive defendant and witness types who were moved up there for safe-keeping,” Honig told me. “As prisons go, it’s okay. Nice drive up there.” Meanwhile, NBC recently published a new report that the brain trust at Mar-a-Lago is preparing to beam Trump in to the Republican National Convention in case his legal problems prevent him from attending.

Republican members fell all over themselves offering up indignant, clumsy defenses of Trump, which of course did more to undermine their own credibility than downplay the multiple news reports sourcing people who’d been in the room. Here’s why it’s a big deal…

• Why Wisconsin matters: Electoral math suggests that Trump doesn’t need to win the state. But a win in Wisconsin—worth 10 electoral votes—would be a knockout blow for Democrats. (It’s not a coincidence, after all, that the Republicans chose to have their convention in Milwaukee.) I couldn’t help thinking of the recent torpedoing of popular Maryland Senate candidate Larry Hogan by senior Trump officials, after he tweeted that Americans should respect the legal process regarding Trump’s guilty verdict. (Hogan, sure enough, picked up Trump’s endorsement on Thursday.)
• The X factor: Four years ago, Trump lost Wisconsin by just 21,000 votes; in 2016, Trump’s win in Wisconsin, by just 23,000 votes, put him in the White House. Democrats also blamed depressed turnout in Milwaukee for Hillary Clinton’s loss. In sum, it’s virtually guaranteed that Democrats will blanket the city with Trump’s quote during the Republican convention and well into the fall.
• Lessons unlearned: The scrambled G.O.P. response demonstrated that Republicans are no better at navigating these spontaneous outbursts than when Trump was president. If anything, they’ve gotten worse. The tweet-first, coordinate-later counteroffensive was perhaps best exemplified by Wisconsin Republican Bryan Steil, who contradicted himself within a matter of hours. When I asked a former House Republican leadership aide if this was a breakdown in party discipline or another casualty of social media whiplash, this person responded: “Both.”

  Within hours, everyone from Joe Biden to Tammy Baldwin to Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson had swung into action, calling to mind the 2012 Democratic Convention, when virtually every congressperson interviewed brought up the headline of Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s 2008 Times op-ed, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”

And yet, 10 months after his public finale on the debate stage at the Reagan Library, Burgum has not only emerged as a legit Trump veep contender but even a possible frontrunner according to some of my sources. On a gut level—the font of so many of Trump’s political instincts—it actually makes a certain amount of sense. Burgum, like the real estate heir turned populist at the top of the ticket, contains multitudes. He may have grown up in the Midwest, but he went to Stanford and sold his Great Plains Software company to Microsoft in 2001 for $1.1 billion, checking a critical demographic box. He is worth over $100 million, according to Forbes, and can help Trump raise cash. (Burgum was the reported muscle behind software billionaire Tom Siebel’s recent $500,000 donation). With his jawline and thick head of salt-and-pepper hair, Burgum might not fully consummate Trump’s quest for a “Cary Grant”-style veep, but he at least models as the strong silent type.

The Burgum family, too, serves as a photogenic, Yellowstone-ish counterpart to the garish Trump clan. Burgum’s second wife, Kathryn, is beautiful and wears cowboy hats—details that, unsurprisingly, keep coming up among the male operatives surrounding Trump. As a recovering alcoholic, her advocacy for mental health and addiction treatment would also play well on the campaign trail. During the Trump presidency, she worked with Melania on multiple occasions, including on building recovery-friendly workplaces. She and Doug were also invited to the White House as part of the First Step Act criminal justice reform initiative, an issue that is particularly important to Kathryn.

For his part, the governor appears eager to serve as a surrogate on TV, and nobody seems to worry that he’ll upstage Trump. Even more importantly, Melania likes them. The two couples bonded over an Easter brunch at Mar-a-Lago, where I’m told the relationship deepened. Last week, Burgum traveled with Trump for three days straight, helping raise money in Silicon Valley, Beverly Hills, Newport Beach, and then Vegas. “He’s safe like Mike Pence,” said a major Trump donor, who claimed the former president is “leaning” toward Burgum. “He’s not polarizing and he’s not overly ambitious and he’s rich and he’s going to be deferential.”

Other advisors have pushed the notion that Trump should pick a woman to help offset his unfavorables with suburban female voters in the critical battleground states where the election will be decided. But most of those potential candidates have fallen out of contention. After meeting Tulsi Gabbard following Barron Trump’s high school graduation in West Palm Beach, Trump passed on the former Democrat despite the pitch that she could expand his reach with independents. Kristi Noem killed whatever chance she might have had when she bragged about killing her dog. Trump is still bitter that Sarah Huckabee Sanders was unwilling to endorse him in the primary due to her friendship with Casey DeSantis. And even though the campaign requested the records of Congresswoman Elise Stefanik for vetting purposes, there just isn’t a lot of buzz around her inside Mar-a-Lago. “The whole notion that putting a woman on there could help Trump is farcical,” said a longtime Trump advisor.

Another source close to Trump said not to rule out a dark horse like Sen. Bill Hagerty, who was not among the other potential veep picks who received records requests like Burgum, Stefanik, J.D. Vance, Tim Scott, Byron Donalds, Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, and Ben Carson. “There will be somebody late to the game and that will cause more suspense,” the advisor predicted.

After all, the dynamics of the race have changed considerably since March, when Trump was severely trailing Joe Biden in fundraising and looking for donor-friendly running mates who could help close the gap. Over the last two months—and especially since his trial and conviction in New York—he’s outraised Biden and has seen several major donors return sheepishly to the fold. This has diminished the allure of aspirants like Scott, who could feasibly lure sugar daddy donors like Larry Ellison. It’s also reduced pressure on Trump to step outside his comfort zonet. “A donor-backed person like Nikki Haley is a bridge too far,” said a major Trump donor. “Money is not a top issue anymore. Burgum is rich, so that helps. But the less he needs donors, there’s less need for historically establishment candidates like Tim Scott.”

Scott, in fact, seems to have fallen victim to another booby trap of Trumpworld. He’s been in the picture just long enough, I’m told, that he is now apparently annoying Trump. One source of pique: He isn’t great on TV. He does seem to be trying to work his way back into Trump’s good graces. He’s holding a big donor retreat next Wednesday—tickets are $100,000 per head—that will be attended by big hitters Ken Griffin and Marc Andreessen, presumably to demonstrate his ties with establishment money and to funnel it back into the campaign.

Vance, the 39-year-old first-term senator, fleeting venture capitalist, and Hillbilly Elegy author, could arguably take up the MAGA mantle as the party’s standard-bearer and next nominee. Trump doesn’t care about all that—“Who cares about legacy when you’re dead?” Trump has said, according to a confidant, a strange statement coming from a U.S. president—but Trump likes that Vance is a strong surrogate on television, and he has an ally in Donald Trump Jr.

But Trump is prone to changing his mind, depending on what he thinks he needs in the moment. Back in 2016, a longtime advisor to the former president reminded me, Trump changed his mind twice before landing on Pence. First he was hot for Newt Gingrich, then Chris Christie, and only then was it Pence. That was a different time, of course—a moment when Trump mathematically needed the Evangelical vote and the Rust Belt, and Pence became his savior. Now, there is a different strategy. “Trump doesn’t think people vote for the V.P.,” said a source who has worked for him for many years. “[It used to be], What state does this person bring to the table? Now it’s, Who do I like being around? Who’s good on TV? Who would do a good job debating Kamala?” Or, as Conway put it to me: “The person should not be a distraction or a subtraction. It should be exciting but not shocking.”

And so this is where Burgum comes into play. “Doug Burgum does no harm. Trump needs someone who is sure-footed and would not contradict or upstage him, someone who understands he will not try to be the next future of the party,” said a Trump advisor. “I think he may get it by default. Everyone else has a major flaw.”